The invention is generally related to the field of automatic telephone dialing and more particularly to computerized systems and methods for scan-dialing telephone numbers and classifying types of equipment which are connected to telephone lines with which the respective telephone numbers are associated.
Scan-dialing of telephone numbers can be important in a number of environments for a number of purposes. For example, an organization may wish to determine, for each of the telephone numbers which it controls, the type or types of equipment, if any, that are connected to the telephone numbers which are associated with the lines. Numerous types of equipment may be connected to a telephone line, such as a voice telephone, an automatic voice answering system (such as an answering machine or a voice mail system), a fax machine, a data modem, and the like. In addition, several types of equipment may be connected to a single telephone line; for example, one line may be shared between a fax machine and a data modem through a switch that directs a call to one or the other based on information, such as tones or tone sequences, that are received from the caller. An organization may wish scan-dial and automatically detect types of equipment connected to telephone numbers which it maintains, for example, instead of trying to inventory the equipment manually, since equipment can be easily connected, disconnected and reconnected to other lines, which would render the inventory out of date. In addition, an organization may wish to scan-dial telephone numbers which it maintains in order to determine whether any of the telephone lines accessible using the respective are connected to equipment which is not authorized by the company or which is not secure pursuant to company policy. In addition, for computers which are connected to the telephone lines which an organization maintains, the organization may wish to ensure that passwords which may be required to access the computers through their dial-up connections are not such as would be easily guessed by an intruder.
The invention provides a new and improved system and method for scan-dialing telephone numbers and classifying types of equipment which are connected to telephone lines with which the respective telephone numbers are associated.
In brief summary, the invention provides a telephone scan-dialing arrangement that includes a listener module, at least one dialing control module and at least one dialing module, each dialing module being associated with a respective modem. The listener module receives a command to initiate a scan-dialing operation in connection with a profile that identifies, inter alia, telephone numbers to be dialed and operations to be performed during each call and telephone number selection criteria, and provides the identification of the profile to the dialing control module The dialing control module obtains from the profile a set of telephone numbers to be used during the scan-dialing operation and provides the obtained telephone numbers to respective ones of the dialer modules to be dialed for a call, along with information identifying operations to be performed during the call, as each dialer module finishes its previous call. During each call, each dialer module controls its associated modem to dial the telephone number provided thereto by the dialing control module and perform the specified operations. In addition, each dialer module stores call result information in the profile based on results of the call.
In embodiments of the invention, during each call the telephone scan-dialing arrangement can determine whether the called telephone line is busy, and whether the call is answered. In those embodiments, if the call is answered the dialer module can determine characteristics of equipment connected to the called telephone line, including whether the equipment is a voice answering equipment, such as a voice telephone or an automated voice answering system, a fax receiving device or a computer. If the answering equipment is an automated voice answering device or a computer, the telephone scan dialing arrangement can also attempt to gain access to, or penetrate, the device or computer to determine the operating system and user name/password combination used to access the device or computer.
In embodiments of the invention, a profile is stored in the form of SQL (structured query language) database, and the telephone scan-dialing arrangement can generate reports from the call result information in the profile using templates in HTML, RTF or other convenient format.